Today, unmanned aerial vehicles (or “UAVs”) are used increasingly frequently in an ever-growing number of applications, including but not limited to surveillance, law enforcement, military, safety, crop management, inspection or delivery operations. A modern unmanned aerial vehicle is typically an integrated system including a number of propellers, motors, communication equipment, imaging devices, power sources and various other components or machines, and may, in some embodiments, be configured to retrieve, transport or deposit payloads of various sizes. Characterized by their comparatively small sizes and high maneuverability, unmanned aerial vehicles may often perform tasks at lower costs, and with lower levels of risk to humans, than other powered vehicles, including but not limited to manned aerial vehicles.
Like any other transportation vehicle, an unmanned aerial vehicle is ineffective when it cannot operate as intended. Because unmanned aerial vehicles lack human pilots, an unmanned aerial vehicle may not suffer from traditional human fatigue symptoms, but the various components of an unmanned aerial vehicle do require routine maintenance and attention in order to ensure that the unmanned aerial vehicle remains in good working order, and may continue to perform missions on command.
As new applications for which unmanned aerial vehicles may be utilized are identified, unmanned aerial vehicles have become more and more complex. Unmanned aerial vehicles now include motors disposed on arms mounted to frames, and a variety of other standard or mission-specific, technologically advanced components of small sizes and weights, each of which may require physical connections to one or more central computers and power sources. As a result, when one of these components requires maintenance, is in a degraded condition or fails outright, the entire unmanned aerial vehicle must be taken out of service until an issue plaguing one or more of the respective components is identified and diagnosed, and the components are repaired or replaced.